This week IRENA’s Director-General Fancesco La Camera shared the World Energy Transitions Outlook 2023 Preview and warned that our world needs a dramatic shift in the energy transition to avoid surpassing our 1.5 C climate target. What this translates to is a total of $35 trillion is needed by 2030 to expedite this energy transition.

Today, the European Union countries gave their final approval to adopt a new regulation that will require a 100% reduction in emission from new cars and vans. The EU policy will require all new cars sold to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035 and 55% lower CO2 emissions from 2030, versus 2021 levels. This is in line with the European Commission’s “Fit for 55” roadmap to cut GHG emissions. However, Germany won an exemption for cars running on e-fuels, leading to concerns that traditional combustion engine cars could still be sold beyond 2035.

On Tuesday this week, the European Parliament formally approved a new law that will effectively ban the sale of new combustion engine cars in the European Unition as of 2035. This new law has been approved in hopes to combat climate change and accelerate the shift from petrol and diesel cars to electric.